Far Future Will See No Evidence of Universe's Origin

Dr. Eggman writes "According to an article on Ars Technica and its accompanying General Relativity and Gravitation journal article 'The Return of a Static Universe and the End of Cosmology', in the far future of the universe all evidence of the origin of the universe will be gone. Intelligences alive 100-billion-years from now will observe a universe that appears much the way our early 1900s view of the universe was: Static, had always been there, and consisted of little more than our own galaxy and a islands of matter. 'The cosmic microwave background, which has provided our most detailed understanding of the Big Bang, will also be gone. Its wavelength will have been shifted to a full meter, and its intensity will drop by 12 orders of magnitude. Even before then, however, the frequency will reach that of the interstellar plasma and be buried in the noise--the stuff of the universe itself will mask the evidence of its origin. Other evidence for the Big Bang comes from the amount of deuterium and helium isotopes in the universe.'"

Re:Perhaps

[644bd346996]

Just off the top of my head, I'm not a physicist but I like to read. If the universe is expanding then it must be a finite area.

Nope. The rest of your logic is sound, but unfortunately it depends on that false assumption. The standard analogy is to imagine a 2d universe existing on the surface of a balloon. As you inflate the balloon, all points on the surface move away from each other. Now, realize that this is completely independent of the volume of the balloon, and it does not even require a finite surface area. Then extrapolate to three dimensions.

Huh?

[catbutt]

Lemme guess, religious wingnut?

Re:Perhaps

[beyondkaoru]

well, regardless of the acceleration observations (which might be caused by other junk pulling on us, unknown phenomena, whatever), it is possible that our galaxy and others were given enough oomph to reach escape velocity relative to everyone else; since space could go on forever (that is to say, the stuff in it might only cover a small portion of it), the oil in a pot analogy doesn't work.

i know it might be a little counterintuitive, the concept of escape velocity (getting enough energy that you'll go fast enough to never have to be pulled back) might apply here. having finite energy does not mean that something can only go a finite distance.

i think the confusion arises from the definition of 'universe' -- people often use it to refer to spacetime or also the stuff in it. in terms of the expansion, we're usually referring to how we notice that we're getting further away from most other things we can see.

of course, all this speculation could get thrown out once we discover something tomorrow...

FTL and science

[Anonymous Coward]

FTL isn't possible in the current models of science.

Always remember that the "Laws of Physics" are our own inventions (ie. merely the mathematics of our models/theories), and are not the Laws of Reality at all.

In fact we change the "Laws of Physics" all the time, whenever we create a new theory, so it's pretty obvious that what we're changing is just a human invention to help us understand how Reality behaves. The Laws of Reality in contrast never change at all, we assume. But of course we can never know them, as we can only see how they make her behave.

FTL is impossible by our current models, but that doesn't mean that Reality doesn't allow it. Given that we've only been creating scientific models for a few centuries, and that we have potentially billions of years ahead of us, it would be rather foolish to suggest that we will never find a model that provides a way. :-)

Re:Peak hydrogen

[Hewligan]

While 25% of the universe's hydrogen may have been converted to heavier elements, about 24% was converted in the first second or so, and then about 1% in the ensuing 13.7 billion years. At that rate, there will be plenty left in 100 billion years time.

Re:Perhaps

[glitch23]

What is time anyway, other than an abstraction of counting how often something vibrates? Isn't the idea that "it's always been there" far easier to grasp than "once there was nothing, now there is everything"?

Regarding your rhetorical time question, I'd suggest you read the Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. Since I'm only halfway through it myself I can't guarantee it will answer your question but he seems to be leading up to it in the book. He also discusses what creates the arrow of time.

As far as your 2nd statement is concerned, you would think that to say "it's always been there" would be easier to grasp but don't you feel compelled to ask "why would it have always been there"?

Also, to counter the other part of your comparison ("once there was nothing, now there is everything") I'd say that to grasp that you just have to consider the fact that the universe is expanding and within the part that is expanding you have all the stuff we can see and what we are familiar with but on the other side of that boundary what is there? The only thing there could be would be nothing. The universe hasn't expanded that far yet. Space hasn't reached those locations yet. The same thing that is there is the same thing that would have existed prior to the creation of the universe.

So in that regard, the question of what is easier to grasp is really simpler to answer and shifts the answer to the other part of your comparison. Something from nothing is easier to understand. It makes more senses for something to have a beginning and an end especially when the "nothing" still exists where the "something" hasn't yet reached so we still have evidence of both the "nothing" and the "something" to help us understand what it was like to just have a "nothing".